Prime Minister Justin Trudeau addresses the Nelson Mandela Peace Summit on Sept. 24, 2018, one a day before the start of the General Debate of the 73rd session of the General Assembly at the United Nations in New York.Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images

It would appear, if we rely on The Canadian Press news agency, the National Post, the Ottawa Citizen, the St. Catharines Standard, CTV News, and so on, that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spent a great deal of his time at the United Nations in New York this week resuming, or mounting, or restarting, or waging something called a “charm offensive.”

It would also appear, from the admittedly imprecise and potentially misleading results of a Google news search, that it is quite commonplace for “Justin Trudeau” to be associated with a “charm offensive” of some sort. It seems to be quite a habit with him, if 4,260 search results amounts to anything like evidence.

Just as plausibly, what this crude data-mining exercise reveals instead is a habit the journalism racket has picked up, and how we’ve developed a dependency on a figure of speech that perhaps obscures more than it reveals.

It is quite commonplace for 'Justin Trudeau' to be associated with a 'charm offensive' of some sort

In whatever way we describe Trudeau’s strategic methodology in New York, it is generally understood to be in aid of obtaining the dubious privilege to sit in one of the UN Security Council’s rotating non-permanent seats in 2021-22 — which just goes to show, even without resort to hackneyed euphemisms, the whole thing still sounds ridiculous. It doesn’t sound much better in the way Marc-André Blanchard, Canada’s Ambassador to the UN, states the point of the effort. It’s not about chair-warming at all, he says, but rather maintaining Canada’s relevance and leveraging Canada’s assets, all to contribute to a “better, secure world.”

The problem is, it is almost impossible to get any sense of the substantive content of Trudeau’s “world stage” pretensions beyond play-acting. Although, after all, and to be fair, that’s what a “stage” is usually for. To be even more fair, setting aside the unserious and self-congratulatory postures Trudeau routinely adopts, there is a well-grounded standpoint, or something very much like it, in the Trudeau government’s devotion to women’s equality, to collective action on climate change, and to preserving the superstructures of global capitalism.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and International Development Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau listen to speakers at the Nelson Mandela Peace Summit opening ceremony at the United Nations headquarters on Sept. 24, 2018.Adrian Wyld/CP

It is not always so easy, however, to discern Canada’s foreign policy objectives, exactly, in the interpretive-dance aspects of Trudeau’s stage performances. At least not without being drawn into the banalities that might not be peculiar to Trudeau’s speeches, but are routinely strewn throughout them anyway. His brief remarks at the United Nations General Assembly, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the birth of South African freedom fighter Nelson Mandela, provide an immediate case in point.

“As we pay tribute to the legacy of Nelson Mandela, Canada reaffirms its commitment to push forward the work he began,” Trudeau proclaimed. “Canada will continue to call out the unfair treatment of racial and ethnic minorities, of women and girls, of Indigenous peoples. We will continue to speak up for the refugees of Rohingya, for the Yazidis of northern Iraq, for the people of Venezuela. Canada will always stand tall for democracy, the rule of law and human rights at home and abroad.”

All well and good. Canada will call out, speak up, and stand tall. Charming. This won’t exactly trouble China or Russia or anyone else sitting around the UN Security Council table, and it certainly won’t cost any votes among the UN member states Canada will be courting in the 2021-22 musical-chairs contest we’re so eager to win. So long as we’re merely calling out and speaking up and standing tall, who cares?

There are stresses and strains on the international order, Trudeau noted, and they are all quite vexing. “All have tested the strength of our commitment and the bounds of our compassion,” he said. “At times like these, we must remember the example of Nelson Mandela, who believed that we should not despair, for our troubles only bear witness to a job unfinished.”

The United Nations General Assembly gathers for its 73rd session on Sept. 26, 2018.Richard Drew/AP

Mandela’s example, however, is of rather sterner stuff than you might imagine from the conveniently anodyne versions serially recalled in New York this week. Against the stresses and strains of South African apartheid, Mandela led the military wing of the African National Congress and trained in the arts of marksmanship and bomb-making. These inconvenient facts are still sometimes counted, absurdly, as marks against the man.

“The suffering of the hard times of struggle did not force Mandela to abandon his method, which was based on the pursuit of peace and accord.” Oh, hold on, that’s not Trudeau talking, that’s Hassan Rouhani, the president of the Khomeinist torture state of Iran. And as it happens, what obliged Mandela to abandon his “method” was his arrest on charges of treason and sabotage in 1964, and his imprisonment until 1990.

Mandela’s example, however, is of rather sterner stuff than you might imagine

“In Mr. Mandela’s time, it was the strong moral pressure of the UN and international community that accelerated the disintegration of apartheid.” That was the revisionist contribution of Wang Yi, foreign minister of the People’s Republic of China, where “apartheid” would be a rather modest way of describing Beijing’s savage oppression of Xinjiang’s Uighurs, as many as a million of whom have been confined to re-education camps — to note but one recent feature of the Chinese dystopia.

Trudeau is quite right that we should not despair, for our troubles only bear witness to a job unfinished. The thing is, our job will remain unfinished until the regime in Iran, and the regime in Beijing, and the bloody tyrannies enslaving quite a few other UN member states, have joined South African apartheid in history’s dustbin.

Calling out, speaking up and standing tall just won’t finish the job. But it would not be charming for Trudeau to say so out loud.

When my assistant said there was a call from the White House, I picked up, said 'Hello' and started to ask if this was a prank

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